Energy-efficient topology control in wireless ad hoc networks with selfish nodes

In wireless ad hoc networks there is no fixed infrastructure or centralized controller to enforce cooperation between nodes. Therefore, nodes may act selfishly in running network protocols for conserving their own energy resources. In this paper, we consider the “topology control (TC) game” as the problem of creating an energy-efficient topology in wireless ad hoc networks in the presence of selfish nodes. We define a new TC game in which nodes are able to dynamically adjust their transmission power in a per-packet manner, and try to minimize their energy usage through considering both traffic load and transmission power parameters. After analyzing the problem, we propose several algorithms to find stable topologies in an environment composed of selfish nodes, using two types of global and local connectivity information. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms by simulations. Our simulation results show that using appropriate local information can interestingly result in more efficient topologies than global information.